So it appears that the US department of transport has been having trouble finding much evidence of true runaway accelerations on Toyota vehicles.
Out of 3000 reported cases, there's only one confirmed case, which was traced to the floor mat trapping the accelerator pedal rather than a fault with the electronic throttle control. Though there isn't any mention as to how many of the 3000 cases have been analysed so far.
Aside from the issues with the floor mat, the most common problem seems to be driver error. People think they've hit the brakes when really they've hit the throttle, then panic and won't release it.
I suppose this is good news for Toyota, after all it is what they were saying from the start - at least until they got too much bad press over it. On the other hand, if it was a design flaw at least it'd be something they could fix. If the problem is just that your customers aren't competent to drive, well... That's a harder one to work around. Maybe they'll have to start giving people a competency test before they let them buy a car, I'm sure that'd go over well.
I'm mostly joking there - it's entirely possible there's a design flaw of some type to do with pedal positioning or angle which is the real problem. I'd think if it were that simple though then Toyota would've been shouting it from the rooftops by now.
No comments:
Post a Comment